Episode 26: Get paid to do meaningful work: Jordan Raynor on soulful service

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you! 

Pop quiz: What’s one of the biggest hurdles to pursuing meaningful work?

The belief that it won’t pay enough to be worth it. That if you give your full heart, you won’t be compensated in return, and the job will take (and take and take…) from you until you’re completely drained. 

There’s lots of evidence to support this frustrating belief. You’ve probably heard plenty of tragic stories about public school teachers who can’t afford to buy a home or social workers drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

And despite these options seeming like they doom you to living paycheck to paycheck…people willingly choose these paths all the time. And a number of them have found ways to do it while also making *good* money (without relying on a spouse or being a trust fund baby). You might think they’re unicorns, but more people than you think have cracked the code on creating a lucrative living and financially thriving while doing meaningful work. 

Like Nicole Lacovoni, the clinical social worker who structured her practice so she could serve more people and make more money than she ever expected possible…and also spends plenty of time with her two daughters and hubby. And Chris Blatnik, who works in the private sector serving and empowering nonprofits at a leading tech company. (Next week’s podcast guest is going to blow your mind on this, too!) 

There are other, more well-known examples: Brene Brown. Rob Bell. Gretchen Rubin. Blake Mycoskie (you know, the founder of TOMS).

There’s also Jordan Raynor, author of Master of One, who forged his own pathway to making money and meaning intersect in his work. As someone who’s pivoted several times (most recently as a tech entrepreneur and stepping out as a full-time author), he knows a thing or two about aligning mission and money in your work.   

Here are his five biggest tips for anyone who wants to do work where they can do good without going broke. 

Know what you value most.

Truthbomb: If you don’t know what you value most, it will be impossible to know if you have it. 

There are two key things you have to be super clear about: knowing the purpose you want your work to serve and the purpose you see work serving in your life.

And, hey, good news: we get to decide what we believe the meaning of work is. For some of us, we’ve decided (or been told) that work is a means to an end. You clock your hours, get your paycheck, and create a rich and meaningful life on your own time. (If that’s you, you probably prioritize the Lifestyle pillar of fulfillment.)

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you might derive your ultimate sense of self and sense of worth from work. Jordan warns that putting all your identity eggs in one work basket is kinda risky. Let’s say your venture fails or you’re laid off. You might make that mean something devastating about who you are, instead of thinking of it simply as a bump in the road. (A bump that almost everyone experiences at least once in their career!)  

Jordan says that thinking about work as service is a healthier approach to acknowledging work as important without giving it too much power over us. (And if you agree with him, the Interests pillar may be the most important one to you because you’re focused on solving problems that interest you AND serving others.) That’s why, for Jordan, mastery in service becomes pivotal. (By the way, if you’ve been reading other articles we’ve written, mastery tends to be a great way to get increases in your pay. Just sayin’.)  

Notice where you’re seeing outsized results. 

In his new book Master of One, Jordan dubbed this concept “the miracle of divine multiplication,” when you get way more fruit from your efforts than what you actually planted seeds for. Maybe you’ve noticed something like this at work. You got the opportunity to lead a project for the first time. Sure, you had sweaty palms when your boss asked you to take it on, but you accepted, gave it your best shot, and crushed it. (Naturally.) Somehow, you had this intuitive sense about what each stakeholder needed, the potential timeline or scope hiccups, and miraculously sensed when you should check in with a team (or knew exactly how to  get them back on track when they missed a deadline…without shaming them).

If something went more seamlessly than your last Seamless order, you may be looking at your own personal miracle of divine multiplication. When you start to develop self-awareness and can easily pick out these moments when you’re getting better results than expected (without having to had put in tons more effort or research), you start to see gifts and strengths that you can leverage. Self-examination is an underutilized (and incredibly valuable) skill to help you optimize towards meaning and money at the same time.

Listen to the feedback from others.

To figure out how you’re serving really well, you need to know if people are being served. On The Career Clarity Show podcast, Jordan, mentioned that he always focuses on asking peers and supervisors what they think he’s exceptional or “world class” at. Gathering these data points (and cross-referencing them against your own intuition) will help you refine your observation skills. (And if you’re particularly hard on yourself — or tend to feel imposter syndrome a lot — the #1 way to combat that is to listen to and trust other people’s opinions.)

Fair warning:It’s important not to douse yourself in so much external feedback that you drown out your own inner voice of knowing. To avoid feedback overload, choose 3 to 5 people you deeply trust to have your best interests at heart and who can provide helpful perspective. Jordan recommends a cheerleader, someone who’s in the trenches with you every day at work, and someone outside the business who sees the bigger picture. But avoid people who give generalized advice or platitudes (you know, crap like “Do what makes you happy” or “Follow your passion”) and instead look for  voices that can help you articulate what kind of deep, heart-centered service feels most like you — and see opportunities for growth that you didn’t notice on your own.

Place little, low pressure bets. 

Jordan talks about making his shift into authordom as a slow but sure process spanning over the last 5 years. It took self-publishing his first two books to get a traditional publishing deal for Called to Create, and it took the best-selling success of that first traditionally published book to cement his business model as a content entrepreneur — and make it make sense to leave his startup.

And, importantly, he didn’t put loads of pressure on himself to nail down the exact timeline or set a revenue goal on that first self-publishing venture. He focused on making decisions, serving, and solving interesting problems, and let the momentum of his side hustle naturally grow with that divine multiplication.

Jordan says, “I think we ask people to commit to their ‘one thing’ vocationally way too early in life. There’s so much value in professional exploration.” (Want more tips on how to optimize your career for exploration so you can create your own luck? Read this article about Cathryn Carruthers.)

Don’t overcomplicate or over-pressurize your decisions.

When you put perfectionistic pressure on yourself to just figure out your next move already(!), you end up paralyzed, unable to move forward, and unable to serve or bring your full potential to life.

Jordan puts it this way: “There is no Mr. Right for your career. There are no ‘wrong’ decisions, there are very few irreversible decisions, but if you believe that the purpose of work is to do your most excellent work in service of others…I believe there is an imperative to make *a* decision.”

That sounds an awful lot like the Career Clarity methodology (download a free eBook about it here!), where we talk about the guiding principles and questions you can use to help you make the best decision for you in your current situation, particularly when it comes to your values, priorities, and gifts. Look for the seedlings: where do you have momentum, energy, curiosity, or magnetic interest? It doesn’t have to be complicated to figure out how to find more money and more meaning in your work—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.   

Need help identifying what meaningful work looks like for you? Check out the eBook—it’s an ideal first step towards understanding the intersection of lucrative, soulful, and joyful work, and can help you get clarity on your next steps.   

SHOW NOTES:

• Read more about Jordan Raynor
• Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Meant To Do
• RSVP Now for a Masterclass on the Pivot Method!
• Career Clarity LIVE in Englewood, Colorado

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